APPLY: Intern at AAWW!

Media Gallery

Searching for something that you can’t encounter on your college campus? Stir crazy in your office cube? Reassessing your career path post-layoff? Contribute 15 hours a week to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) Internship this term: meet new friends, build your portfolio of clips, and learn about Asian American literature and arts non-profit management.

Established in 1991, AAWW is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans–in other words, we’re the preeminent organization dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.

Through our curatorial platform, which includes our New York author event series based in Chelsea, and our online editorial initiatives, we’re building the Asian American intellectual culture of tomorrow.

Our interns participate at every stage of the multi-media publication and event production process: planning and promoting our literary programming; building and contributing to our emerging magazines; shooting, recording, and editing photos, audio, and video, managing our social media and participating in grants research; designing and marketing our new initiatives; and learning about the bigger picture issues involved in organizational development. As an intern, you’ll receive a number of benefits including Workshop membership and free enrollment in a writing workshop.

Early applicants will be given preference. Only completed applications will be considered.

POSITIONS:

Author Events Intern

Assist our Programs staff in shaping our dynamic calendar of public events–not to mention rub elbows with famous writers who read on stage at AAWW! The Events intern will aid in publicity efforts, research for event participants, handle book orders and pre-event logistics, staff events, record audio and video, and maintain and organize a diverse catalog of writers and artists.

Qualifications:
Great research skills, ability to multi-task, and attention to detail a must. Interest in literature, specifically Asian American literature, preferred.Bonus Qualifications–Design, A/V, Social Media, & Marketing:
Experience in video editing using Final Cut Pro. Handling PA systems, microphones, still and video cameras, and video projectors also helpful. Proficiency with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator a plus.
Persuasive writing skills and familiarity with Facebook and Twitter.

Editorial Intern

Assist our editors with our vibrant online magazines: The Margins and Open City. You’ll be directly involved in every step of the editorial process, including: editorial research, copy editing, proof reading, reporting, fact checking, writing and blogging, photo research, web production, updating site elements and managing social media. Please read through each of the sites prior to applying.

Want to learn all about grant writing and nonprofit fundraising? Flex your development muscles by helping us manage our databases and assist with the ins-and-outs of writing successful proposals. You’ll also assist our Development staff with grant writing and research—both vital skills in a non-profit environment.

Do you love messing around on Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign? Do you screen-grab movie-stills and weird images to save for later? Do you have fierce opinions on font foundries and typefaces? We’re looking for interns who can take initiative on design projects, have a curiosity and passion for graphic design and visual culture, and who know how to translate those skills into successful social media and marketing campaigns. You’ll take on design projects for AAWW. You’ll help us figure out how to grow our audience online through visual language. This internship is perfect for someone who wants to learn how to make a big impact at a small non-profit with a shoestring budget. If you are in art school, graduate school, or simply want to build your design portfolio, this is the position for you!

Guess what? AAWW is sending out even more love into the community! Last year we started arts and education programming that serves senior citizens and youth. There’s lots of love to get out there so we’re looking for interns with a passion for programming, organizing, and plenty of elbow grease to spare. You’ll have the opportunity to engage and collaborate with communities and the organizations that serve them. Assist our Youth and Community Programs staff in a nonprofit environment and learn how a community program is developed and what it takes to sustain it. Most importantly, have fun and eat many snacks!

Qualifications:
Great research skills, ability to multi-task, persuasive writing skills, and attention to detail a must. Excel and online database experience, preferred.

Do you find framing the perfect camera angle cathartic? Do you find Ted Talks uninteresting but are fascinated by the production quality? Is Periscoping on your iPhone not exciting enough anymore? Whether you have some video experience and want to learn more about the Asian American non-profit/literary world or you’re a student hosting events at your school and want a better A/V foundation, this internship is for you. You will be assisting the A/V Producer with our A/V system, filming our events and editing archival footage in Premiere for our social media platforms. You’ll also be prepping and running our multi-cam live video set-up!

Qualifications:
Working knowledge of Adobe Premiere (or other professional video editing software), strong attention to detail, multi-tasking skills, and enthusiasm a must!

Events

Four Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm)
Tuesdays, August 8, August 15, August 22, and August 29
Fees & Payment Options:
$220 General / $200 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of ten students.
Why you should take this class: Writer & Director Darine Hotait bridges the gap between literature and cinema due to her genuine fascination and devotion to both. A mentor in numerous screenwriting workshops at film festivals and institutions such as the Med Film Festival in Rome, Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam, Mizna Literary Gathering in Minneapolis, among others —Darine invites you to learn how to take the elements that construct a screenplay into development: act structure, character development, and scene breakdown.
Class Description: Develop your screenwriting skills with award-winning writer and director Darine Hotait, whose films screened at top international film festivals, received multiple Best Fiction awards and were acquired by Sundance TV, AMC Networks & BBC Channel. Her feature screenplays were selected at Cannes Film Festival's International Scriptwriters' Pavilion and were among the top 5 finalists at Hearst Screenwriting Competition. She's the recipient of the AFAC cinema grant and a current literary fellow at New York Foundation for the Arts.
Over the period of 4 weeks, writers will be guided through the process of developing a feature film screenplay using various hands-on exercises. Participants are expected to have a one-page storyline that they wish to develop into a feature film screenplay during the workshop. REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Darine Hotait is the writer and director of various short films Beirut Hide and Seek (2011), and I Say Dust(2015), which screened at over 70 international film festivals and received multiple Best Short Fiction awards. Her films received prestigious distribution and were acquired by reputable platforms such as AMC Network, Sundance Channel, BBC Channel, Shorts International & The Journal of Short Films. Her debut science fiction feature film project Symphony of a Flood was selected at the International Screenwriters' Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was a finalist at the prestigious Hearst Screenwriting Competition at San Francisco Film Society.
Her plays and short stories have been published in numerous publications in print and online. Darine has mentored over 50 screenwriting workshops around the world at various institutions and international film festivals. Since 2010, Darine serves as the founder and creative director of Cinephilia Productions in New York City, an incubator for the development of writers and filmmakers from the MENA region.
Praise for I Say Dust (2015)“The film’s power and beauty comes in its subtlety. The story’s intensity and potency lies in Darine’s ability to sing cinematic brilliance in the interstices between scenes and to reveal more about the characters in their silence. The plot is unsaturated and always in dialogue with the audience: what is strategically unpictured by Darine is viscerally felt by the viewer.”
— Leena Habiballah, Qahwa Project, US“The characters are complex, the writing – interspersed with poetry – is so touching, and the shots so poignant it just seems like a damn shame it’s a short rather than a feature length film.”
— Wided Khadraoui, Kalimat Magazine“There is romance, sweet and ephemeral - an encounter more potent, perhaps, for the sense of coming home. A thoughtful film which packs a lot of ideas into a tight space, I Say Dust speaks well to the talents of those involved. It’s no surprise that it has multiple awards to its name.”
— Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (Edinburgh)..

Four Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm)
Wednesdays August 9th, August 16th, August 23rd, August 30th
Fees & Payment Options:
$200 General / $180 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students.
Why you should take this class: Poet Sally Wen Mao, award-winning author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013, BOMB Magazine, Poetry, and more. You can explore Lavender Town in The Margins and check out the feature in Bustle listing her as one of the best poetry debuts in the last five years. Sally Wen Mao invites you to re-invent language and to re-invent the familiar in this protest poetry workshop.
Class Description: We are living in a senseless political era. How do we react, as writers, artists, and citizens? Where do we channel our anger, our protest, our ideals – how do we do right by our art and our politics? In this workshop, participants consider the political poem and examine the ways to approach resistance through language, lyric, and form—in poetry or in lyric essays. Drawing from contemporary poets like Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Timothy Yu, Srikanth Reddy, Solmaz Sharif, and Claudia Rankine, we will examine over the course of several sessions the tools we can use to dismantle the powerful narratives that silence and oppress – and in that process, discover our own political voice. This course will include writing exercises and generative sessions as well as a workshop.
REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Sally Wen Mao is the author of OCULUS (Graywolf Press 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets & Writers, The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, among others. Her poems have received a Pushcart Prize and published in Tin House, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2013, and A Public Space, among others.
​”​Linguistically dexterous and formally astute, Mao’s tight and textured debut ​[Mad Honey Symposium] ​conjures an absurd, lush, occasionally poisonous world and the ravenous humans and animals that travel through it. . . . With echoes of Glück and Plath, Mao generates stunning landscapes where the flora and fauna reflect her presence and strength of voice.​”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“In Mad Honey Symposium, Sally Wen Mao offers delicious diction: ‘archipelago . . . arpeggios;’ ‘horntails / swarm the wax leaves;’ ‘Fetal and feral, we curl;’ ‘mouth on your pendulum;’ ‘in the rigmarole of lucky living—!’ She also offers a heightened attention to how words work and work out in various contexts. The poet takes us all over the place in time and geography—from her mother’s bed to Audubon’s dreams to sputnik to hive and back again—all in the service of feeling deeply. A lovely debut collection.”
—Kimiko Hahn..

'I glanced curiously at the stranger. He looked old and frail. The sky outside the window seemed darker with his figure in profile. Though he was sitting next to us, he appeared to be somewhere else entirely.'